ducks – Peacock Orchard

Life and Loss on the Farm

We have had an eventful few weeks. So many new babies around and so many more in the works that it is rather exciting. The peachicks have finally hatched and momma pea is doing a wonderful job with them.

In fact, she has kept them quite hidden most of the time. So much so that I had a hard time figuring out how many she’d had. Seven, I now know. She has finally gone into the barn where I have locked her up in solitary confinement. Don’t feel bad for her though, her confinement is approximately 300 sq ft. It did take some talented staple gunning though. I had to chicken wire the area between the run in portion of the barn and the tack shed, where the chickens sleep every night. I didn’t want the chickens getting into the pea area and drinking the water, which I have to medicate for coccidosis. I hope that by keeping her confined in the barn with the medicated water I can save the peachicks. In years past the momma peas have always lost every single baby to coccidosis. When I raise them I manage to medicate them enough to get them through but then they die as soon as I release them as, for some reason, they are mighty attracted to the dogs, who think they are delicious.

She has two blackshoulder babies and 5 india blue. I’ve never had a blackshoulder survive. I am very hopeful this year around.

Daddy has been quite occupied running about screaming his awful scream. He is the worst sounding peacock I’ve ever heard. It sounds like he has something stuck in his throat.

In other baby news, we had 2 chicks hatch. The mama has been taking very good care of them.

The ducks have eggs all over the place. Four of the hens have taken to sitting, two on a single nest.

They do an excellent job of caring for their eggs, even when they get up to eat.

I had to post this photo of Son helping me with feeding time. Now that he has discovered he can carry feed in his dump truck he is all in for feeding time chores.

Now the loss part of this post. Our twelve year old weimeraner has passed on. He was in awful shape for some time and suffered an injury that he was unable to recover from. Being blind he injured himself quite often but this last one was rather horrific. He is buried with his brother, Louie, and our dearest Celsus. This has been a great comfort to the children who are happy to know he is not alone. I like to remember him as a younger dog. A dog that caused havoc wherever he went and proudly caught whatever we sent him after.

An unexpected opportunity

Even with my No Freeze, No Fuss, Automatic poultry waterer I was not looking forward to watering 22 ducks over the winter. Ducks are messy. I’m sure you are all shocked to learn that. So we decided we would keep 7 ducks, 6 hens and our welsh harlequin drake. I placed a Craigslist ad for the remaining 15 and was flooded with responses. I was iffy about promising the ducks to any one person. Husband and I decided a first come, first serve mentality was the best, as we’d been stood up by buyers before. However, I was contacted by a very persistent man who wanted all 15 immediately. When discussing the price he casually mentioned he’d like to do a trade. He had pigs, goats and donkeys available. Pigs, oh yes oh yes!

Now, to convince Husband that instead of getting money to help feed the other birds over the winter we should take on 2 more mouths. That went smoothly and it was arranged. While our kids were enjoying themselves at a Halloween party we loaded 15 ducks up in boxes and set off to meet up with our pigs.

This duck was a real PITA. I’d cut slits out of an abundance of caution. We did not want anyone suffocating. There were 2-3 ducks in each box, plenty of space. This duck though, she just had to make a fuss the ENTIRE trip. She annoyed her box mate so much that she jumped ship to another box half way through the journey. I kept crawling back to shove her head down and she’d just pop right back up quacking like a lunatic. Luckily she never figured out how to escape, or we’d have had a loose crazy duck running about the vehicle. Husband would have been thrilled!

At our destination we got to pick between 3 pigs. A larger pig and 2 cute small ones. I went with the two small ones. We loaded them up in the back and set off. They were calm during the journey. Unloading them was a bit of a trick as they didn’t want to be touched. I managed it and they are happily tucked in now.

I originally intended to keep the pigs separate from the poultry. I have 2 connecting runs, one was intended for the ducks, and had a pond, but the pond leaked and the ducks always stayed in the barn with everyone else anyway. I never bothered putting a gate up between the two runs though and so I had a pallet temporarily blocking the entrance.

The pond needed removed, it was cement. I did not want the pigs to slip down and be unable to get back up. So we spent an afternoon removing the cement. The kids helped pick up the small bits, for a price, while we broke the cement into large chunks. We were under constant turkey supervision.

It is now a giant dirt hole that the pigs have no problem navigating. I’m really hoping they gley this pond for us and will be watering them in the bottom of it.

While I was slipping into the barn to turn on the electric fence (dogs kept trying to get at the pigs) a pig followed and…I figured that was fine. They show no interest in the birds and the man we got them from said his chickens go in with his pigs all the time. The pigs are happy to graze on all of the grasses and such in the poultry runs. The birds never did scratch down their runs as they were far too busy begging at the doorstep. I’m not sure how long the grasses will hold out before we have dirt runs, but I’m hoping they can last until spring.

The pigs prefer the duck area. It’s extra muddy!

I am free feeding the pigs, as directed, but this brings about the challenge of keeping everyone else from eating the pig food. I’m mostly just waiting until butcher time when 80% of our birds will be removed.

The kids named the pigs. Son named the bigger pink one Rocker and Daughter named the small black and white pig BLT. Well she said B.L.E. but I suggested we change that to a T and she said that was good. She is desperate to pet them but the pigs are desperate to stay away from her. I hope they adjust in time to each other.

I put 2 feet of hay in the duck hut turned pig shed and the pigs happily slept there their first night, buried in the hay. In fact I couldn’t find them the next morning and was freaking out about it. Thank goodness Rocker snores!

So that is the amazing story of how I turned 15 ducks into 2 pigs. I love my man!

No Freeze, No Fuss, Automatic Poultry Waterer

As most animal owners know, water is the biggest issue in winter. I bought this Awesome Waterer after spending several winters miserably hauling water out to the barn in milk jugs. My problem is that I have ducks and chickens together. So, as soon as I bring out water the ducks dive in and splash it all out of the dish.

I bought the waterer and tested it through the summer. I wanted to see if it could handle the duck stress. It did so admirably. So the next step was winterizing it. To do that I needed to buy a very short hose. I tried to find one at a local box store but I waited too late into fall and could find none. So I ended up buying this 4′ Utility Hose. I then had to buy some heat tape to keep it all from freezing. This proved difficult again as I wanted an odd size of tape. I ended up purchasing this heat tape. It was just long enough. Home Depot does carry this brand of heat tape but I could only find 6′ and 12′ in my store. I needed enough to go over our spigot and run around the water dish. 9′ was just barely long enough. I then bought some pipe insulation and set it all up. I used electrical tape to tape it all together.

Here is my lovely finished product. I have always used 1/2 a dog kennel for summer watering so I put the dish inside it and filled around it with sand to keep down on the mess. I need to buy more sand to perfect it.

I did end up adding more tape to the section of hose that you can see in this picture.

My welshies hang about the water area. I just empty it out once a day. When it is really cold (in the single digits) I do have to go break the ice off the very top of it in the mornings. Otherwise it is doing really well. It has only frozen once, and then because someone unplugged the heat tape. I don’t want to point fingers but I have noticed a particular chicken that thinks it needs to perch on the extension cord.

This post contains affiliate links. I bought those exact products from Amazon and attest to their greatness.

Strawberry Pyramid

I have been quite obsessed with tires as a building material. I know many people dislike them because of the chemicals that can potentially leech out, but I love them. My first tire project was a sand box for the kids. After seeing how easy it was and how nicely they held plants I decided to make a strawberry pyramid. There is a local tire shop that is quite used to me now. In fact they searched around and brought me the top tire of the pyramid because they knew I would love the texture of the tread. I do indeed love it!

To start I laid out my tire pattern. Once I decided how to stack the tires I cut the sidewall off of one side of each tire. I then laid out the bottom tires and filled them with dirt. That beautiful little car in the pictures is what I used to transport compost from the neighbors horses. I had a big tarp (the one in the picture) in the trunk and I filled it up. It took several trips but I’m happy with the results.

The kids LOVED to climb this. In fact our daughter couldn’t walk but she could climb this thing like a champ. We got so interesting over here that the ducks even had to come investigate:

Like our pile of materials? All of those pallets went to the tree line to help with wind protection. We had some bushes die last winter. The boards went to various projects.

As for the strawberries, I did plant and they grew pretty well. Not a harvest-able amount but my son was happily picking and eating whenever a berry turned red. I have more berries to plant this spring so I hope we get enough for shortcake. Unfortunately, I foolishly didn’t take any more pictures of it and there is nothing to see right now. I will update in summer 2015.

As far as strawberry varieties, I really want to see if I can get some amazing ones growing. I’ve bought the following seeds/roots:
Pineberry, Alpine Strawberry and Evie Everbearing Strawberry.

So far the pineberry has not germinated. I have had success with growing strawberries from seed in the past, so I’m hoping the seeds will germinate soon. If not I will buy the bare root plants I found on Amazon. I really want to try the pineberry variety.

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